The wind blows chaff evenly over all alike

The wind blows chaff evenly over all alike turns a biblical-sounding image of impartial dispersal into a sharp description of urban anonymity. As people stream across Alexanderplatz, their faces and directions cease to distinguish them; the crowd is carried by forces that seem to treat everyone equally, whatever private life each person may contain.

The Image of the Wind and Chaff

The phrase appears as people moving east, west, north, and south converge and cross the square. The narrator observes that an eastbound migrant’s face cannot be distinguished from that of someone heading in another direction. People exchange roles as they move: those crossing toward Aschinger’s may be found an hour later in front of the emptied department store. The image of chaff blown evenly over all makes this interchangeability feel less like a choice than a common condition imposed on the crowd.

The Crowd in Motion

The surrounding scene gives the metaphor a physical setting. Police regulate the square, halting one flow of traffic so another can pass; when the signal changes, pedestrians hurry across, some stopping on the traffic island and others continuing over wooden planks. Streams merge and turn laterally, while the people who make them up remain difficult to distinguish. The city’s movement is organized, but individual destinations and circumstances dissolve into its circulation.

Social Meaning

The image does not claim that every person has the same inner life. The passage immediately contrasts the crowd’s outward uniformity with the unknowable activity within each passenger: people carry papers, belongings, and private thoughts, yet their inner states remain beyond public view. The wind’s even treatment therefore holds two ideas together: each person has an unobserved particular life, while the mass of the city renders people externally interchangeable. The phrase gives this tension a compact form, making anonymous movement across Alexanderplatz an image of a wider social condition rather than merely a traffic scene.